Description: As the twelfth Smithsonian Secretary, G. Wayne Clough, retires, historian Pamela Henson looks back on his impact on the Smithsonian in 6 ½ short years – creating a positive dynamic, fostering environmental responsibility, and stimulating collaborations across the Institution.
Description: Spencer F. Baird and George Brown Goode used their diverse, and sometimes quirky, contacts from the U.S. Fish Commission to fill exhibit cabinets in the U.S. National Museum.
Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="368" caption="Interior of Office of Printing and Photographic Service's cold storage vault, 1983, by Richard K. Hofmeister, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Record Unit 371 Box 4 Folder September 1983, Negative Number 2004-10338."][/caption] To be sure, the Smithsonian has a lot of photographs. Millions of them in hundreds of
Description: When you’re all gathered together, sometimes there are just too many cooks in the kitchen, or younger siblings underfoot. Not everyone is into football or jigsaw puzzles, so why not gather together a couple of people from separate generations and branches of the family tree and do some photo identification and preservation? Set aside an hour between or after the meal to pull
Description: The term “personal equation” came into use in the 19th century as scientists found that observers have inherent biases: some anticipate events, and some report events after they have occurred. Recognition of the problem led to a spate of personal equation instruments: some measured biases of this sort, and some reduced the effect of personal errors. Most of these
Description: Throughout his twenty-five years as a Science Service journalist, Frank Thone maintained an active correspondence with fellow scientists and conservationists. His letters in the Smithsonian Institution Archives both preserve his wit and offer a glimpse at the informal networking that helped shape how Americans perceived the natural world. One of Thone’s correspondents was a
Description: During this Women’s History Month, the Smithsonian Transcription Center has been highlighting projects from women around the Smithsonian. Among these women is Margaret Collins, a pioneering scientist and civil rights activist. While her fieldwork has been written about previously, that is clearly just one part of a full and distinguished career.Collins’ interest in science
Description: The DMZ ecology project reveals the Smithsonian’s commitment to ecological research programs as well as the complexity and contingency of an international collaboration.
Description: I cannot, I feel, have any regrets about my accomplishments. What comes from art will just come. I don’t feel any need to strive. - John N. Robinson One of my favorite parts of working in an archive is the opportunity to immerse myself in other people’s worlds, to learn more about their stories and experiences. One such person I encountered recently was John N. Robinson, a
Description: Lucy Hunter Baird did not shy away from her father’s towering legacy in American science, she embraced it. As the only child of Spencer Fullerton Baird, second Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Lucy Baird developed a passion for her father’s discipline of ornithology (the study of birds) and strove to chronicle his extraordinary life in a biography. Although she was